The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. The Path of Knowledge and Its Stages

Imaginative Knowledge and Artistic Imagination

[ 1 ] Among the various instructions given by the occult teacher to the student, imagination was mentioned in second place. It consists in the fact that man does not go through life as he does in everyday life, but in the sense of Goethe's saying, “Everything transitory is only a parable,” so that behind every animal and every plant something dawns on him that lies behind it. In the autumn crocus, for example, they will then see an image of melancholy, in the violet an image of quiet piety, in the sunflower an image of life bursting with energy, of independence, of ambition. When people live in this sense, they rise to imaginative knowledge. He then sees something like a cold flame rising from a plant, a color image that introduces him to the astral plane. In this way, the student is led to see things that spiritual beings from other worlds show him. However, it has already been said that the student must strictly follow the occult teacher, because only the teacher can tell him what is subjective and what is objective. And the occult teacher can give the student the necessary stability that the sensory world provides of its own accord, because it constantly corrects errors. In the astral world, however, it is different. There, one is easily subject to deception; there, the more experienced must stand by one's side.

[ 2 ] The teacher gives a series of instructions to the student who wants to follow the Rosicrucian path. First, he gives him a specific instruction when he has begun to reach the stage of imaginative development. He tells them: First, strive not only to love individual animals, not only to develop a certain relationship with individual animals, to experience this or that with this or that animal, but try to have a living feeling for entire groups of animals, then you will get an idea of what the group soul is. The individual soul that is on the physical plane in humans is on the astral plane in animals. Animals cannot say “I” here on the physical plane.

[ 3 ] The question is often asked: Does the animal not have a soul like the human being? It does have such a soul, but the animal soul is up on the astral plane. The individual animal relates to the animal soul in the same way that the individual organs relate to the soul in the human being. If you hurt a finger, it is the soul that feels it. All the sensations of the individual organs go to the soul. This is also the case with a group of animals. Everything that the individual animal feels is felt by the group soul within it. Take, for example, all the different lions: the feelings of the lions all lead to a communal soul. On the astral plane, all lions have a communal group soul. Thus, all animals on the astral plane have their group soul. If you cause pain to an individual lion, or if it feels pleasure, this continues up to the astral plane, just as the pain in your finger continues up to your human soul. Humans can rise to an understanding of the group soul if they are able to form a shape that contains all the individual lions, just as a general concept contains the individual entities that belong to it.

[ 4 ] The plant has its soul in the rupa part of the devachan plane. By learning to overlook a group of plants and to gain a certain relationship to the group soul of the plants, man learns to penetrate the group souls of the plants on the rupa plane. When the individual lily or tulip is no longer something special to them, but when the individuals grow together into living, condensed imaginations that become images, then the human being experiences something completely new. It is important that this is a very concrete image, individually formed in the imagination. Then the person experiences that the plant cover of the earth, that any meadow sown with flowers, becomes something completely new to them, that the flowers become a real revelation of the spirit of the earth. This is the revelation of these different plant group souls. Just as human tears become an expression of the inner sadness of the soul, just as the physiognomy of a person becomes an expression of their soul, so the occultist learns to regard the green of the plant cover as an expression of inner processes, of the real spiritual life of the earth. Thus, certain plants become for them like the tears of the earth, from which the inner sorrow of the earth wells up. As with someone who feels and sympathizes with the tears of their fellow human beings, a new, imaginative content pours into the soul of the student.

[ 5 ] Human beings must go through these moods. If they go through the corresponding mood in relation to the animal world, they climb up to the astral plane. If they put themselves in the mood described towards the plant world, they climb up to the lower part of the Devachan plane. Then they observe the flames rising from the plants. The plant cover of the earth is then covered with a sum of formations, the incarnations of the rays of light that descend upon the plants.

[ 6 ] In this way, one can also go as far as dead stone. There is a basic feeling in the stone world. Let us take the light-filled rock crystal. When one looks at it, one will say to oneself: in a way, this represents an ideal for human beings themselves. Just as the physical body of human beings represents something physically material, so too is the stone something physically material. But there is a future perspective to which the occult teacher guides the student. Even today, human beings are permeated by drives and desires, by passions. This saturates the physical nature. But the occultist has an ideal before him. He says to himself: The animal nature of the human being will gradually be purified and cleansed to a degree where this human body can stand before us as chaste and desireless as the mineral, which desires nothing, in which no desire is stirred when something comes near it. The inner material nature of the mineral is chaste and pure. This chastity and purity is the feeling that should pervade the student when looking at the world of rocks. Depending on how the world of rocks presents itself in its various forms and colors, these feelings are specified, but the basic feeling that pervades the mineral kingdom is chastity.

[ 7 ] Today, our Earth has a very specific configuration, a very specific form. Let us go back in the evolution of the Earth. It once had a completely different shape. Let us transport ourselves to Atlantis and even further back. There we encounter ever higher temperatures, at which metals flowed around like water does today. All metals became these passages in the earth because they first flowed in streams. Just as lead is solid today and mercury is liquid, lead was once liquid, and mercury will one day become a solid metal. Thus, the earth is changeable, but human beings have always gone through these various evolutions. In the times we have spoken of, the physical human being did not yet exist. But the etheric body and the astral body were there; they could live in even higher temperatures. With the cooling, the sheaths gradually formed and organized themselves around the human being.

[ 8 ] While something new has always been formed in humans during the evolution of the earth, something new has also been formed outside in nature around them. First, the human eye was formed on the sun planet. The etheric body was the first to develop, and this in turn formed the human physical eye. Just as a piece of ice freezes out of water, so the physical organs are formed out of the finer etheric body. Inside the human being, the physical organs were formed, while outside, the earth became solid. In every age, the formation of an organ in the human being goes hand in hand with the formation of certain configurations outside in nature. While the eye was being formed in the human being, chrysolite was formed in the mineral kingdom. Therefore, one can imagine that the same forces that bring together the nature of chrysolite outside form the eye in the human being.

[ 9 ] We cannot be satisfied with general statements that the human being is the microcosm and the world is the macrocosm, but occultism has proven the real connection between the human being and the world. When the physical organ for intellectual combination was formed in the Atlantean epoch, lead solidified outside; it changed from a liquid to a solid state. The same forces are at work in the solidification of lead and in the intellectual organism. One can only understand the human being when one can recognize the connections between the human being and the forces of nature. There is a special group within the socialist movement that differs greatly from general social democracy in its moderation. These are the moderates, who have always thought highly of intellectual combinations. This special group within the socialist movement is made up of printers. This is because printers work with lead. The collective bargaining agreement between workers and employers was first developed among printers. Lead causes this state of mind when it is absorbed in small quantities.

[ 10 ] Another example can be taken from experience, where the effect of the nature of a metal on a person could be observed in a similar way. A person noticed how easily he could find analogies in all kinds of things. One could conclude that he had a lot to do with copper. That was indeed the case! He was a French horn player in an orchestra, so he was involved with an instrument that contains a lot of copper.

[ 11 ] Once the relationship between the external, inanimate world and the human organism is studied, one will find that there is a relationship between humans and their environment in many different ways, for example, the relationship between the senses and gemstones. There are certain relationships with gemstones that are rooted in the evolution of the senses. We have already found a relationship with the eye in chrysolite. There is also a relationship with the hearing organ in onyx. It has a strange relationship with the vibrations of the ego life in humans. Occultists have always associated it with this. For example, it represents life emerging from death. In Goethe's “Fairy Tale,” the dead dog is transformed into an onyx by the old man's lamp. Goethe's intuition is the result of occult knowledge. This is related to the relationship between onyx and the organ of hearing. There is also an occult relationship between the organ of taste and topaz, the sense of smell and jasper, the sense of touch as the human sense of warmth and carnelian, productive imagination and carbuncle. The latter was used as the symbol of productive imagination, which arose in humans at the same time as the carbuncle in nature.

[ 12 ] The occult symbols are drawn from the depths of true wisdom. Wherever one enters into occult symbolism, one finds true knowledge. Those who recognize the meaning of a mineral find access to the upper parts of the Devachan plane. When one sees a gemstone and feels what it has to say to us, one finds access to the Arupa parts of the Devachan plane. In this way, the occult student's view expands, and more and more worlds open up to him. He must not be satisfied with general references, but must find access to the whole world piece by piece.

[ 13 ] In German literature, too, one can see how an instinctive intuition for mineral forces manifests itself in poets who were miners, for example in Novaks, who had studied mining science. Körner often chose miners as the models for his occult personalities. In the poet Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, that remarkable spirit who at times immersed himself artistically in the mysteries of nature, especially in the story “The Mines of Falun,” one senses many echoes that hint at the occult relationships between the mineral kingdom and human beings, and which also show how occult forces intervene in the artistic imagination in strange ways.

[ 14 ] Mystery is the true birthplace of art. The mysteries were real and alive in the astral realm. There was a synthesis of truth, beauty, and piety. This was very much the case with the Egyptian mysteries and those in Asia, as well as in the mysteries of Greece, especially in the Eleusinian mysteries. There, the disciples truly saw how the spiritual powers descended into the various forms of existence. At that time, there was no other science than that which one saw. There was no other piety than that which arose in the soul when one looked into the mysteries. Nor was there any other beauty than that which one beheld when the gods descended.

[ 15 ] We live in a barbaric age, a chaotic age, an age without style. All great artistic epochs were created from the deepest spiritual life. Anyone who looks at the Greek images of the gods sees exactly three different types: First, there is the Zeus type, which also includes Pallas Athena and Apollo. In this, the Greeks characterized their own race. It was a specific design of the oval of the eyes, the nose, and the mouth. Secondly, one can observe the circle, which can be named after the type of Mercury. The ears are completely different, the nose is completely different, the hair is woolly and frizzy. Thirdly, there is the satyr type, where we find a completely different shape of the corners of the mouth, a different nose, eyes, and so on. These three types are clearly represented in Greek sculpture. The satyr type is said to represent an ancient race, the Mercury type the race that followed it, and the Zeus type the fifth race.

[ 16 ] In the past, spiritual worldviews permeated and saturated everything. The Middle Ages were a time when this was also reflected in craftsmanship, when every door lock was a kind of work of art. In our external culture, we still encountered what the soul had created. Modern times are very different. The new era has produced only one style, namely the department store. The department store will be as characteristic of our time as Gothic buildings, such as Cologne Cathedral, were of the Middle Ages in the 13th and 14th centuries. The cultural history of the future will have to reckon with the department store just as we do with the Gothic buildings of the Middle Ages. The new life is lived out in these forms. Through the spread of spiritual science teachings, the world will once again be filled with spiritual content. When spiritual life later finds expression in external forms, we will have a style that expresses this spiritual life. What lives in spiritual science must later find expression in external forms. We must therefore regard the mission of spiritual science as a cultural mission.